Critical Notes

Álvaro Enrigue, Edna O’Brien, Katie Roiphe, Helen Oyeyemi, Peggy Orenstein, and more

By Eric Liebetrau

Your reviews seed this roundup; please send items, including new about your new publications and recent honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. Make sure to send links that do not require a subscription or username and password.

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At Kirkus, Gerald Bartell talks to Linwood Barclay. Bartell also reviews “The Books That Changed My Life,” edited by Bethanne Patrick.

Michael Lindgren also reviews Patrick's collection.

Julia M. Klein reviews Arlene Heyman's “Scary Old Sex” for the Forward. Klein also reviews Tara Zahra's “The Great Departure” for the Chicago Tribune. For the Boston Globe, Klein reviews Peggy Orenstein's “Girls & Sex” and Nancy Jo Sales's “American Girls.” As well as Ingrid Carlberg's “Raoul Wallenberg” for the Forward.

David Abrams pays tribute to the late Jim Harrison.

At the Toronto Star, Rayyan Al-Shawaf reviews Shelter, a debut novel by Jung Yun.

Steven Kellman reviews “Stork Mountain,” by Miroslav Penkov.

“Mysterious Keys Unlock Surreal Landscapes In 'What Is Yours Is Not Yours,'” from Maureen Corrigan.

Michael Magras reviews Álvaro Enrigue's Sudden Death. Magras also reviews Katie Roiphe's “The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End.”

In the New York Journal of Books, David Cooper reviews “Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo” by Boris Fishman. Cooper also reviews “The Best Place on Earth” by Ayelet Tsabari.

Lori Feathers reviews Raja Alem’s “The Dove’s Necklace” at Words Without Borders.

Bharti Kirchner reviews Somini Sengupta’s new nonfiction book “The End of Karma.”

Joe Peschel reviews “Free Men,” by Katy Simpson Smith in the Charlotte Observer. Peschel also reviews “Shylock is My Name,” Howard Jacobson.

At the Rumpus, Bradley Sides reviews Tom Hart's graphic memoir “Rosalie Lightning.”

Laverne Frith reviews “XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century” by Campbell McGrath.

Priscilla Gilman reviews Edna O'Brien's “The Little Red Chairs.”

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Anita Felicelli reviews “The Association of Small Bombs and “The Year of the Runaways.”

“Joseph Brodsky, Darker and Brighter,” from Cynthia Haven.

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari reviews former NBCC fiction finalist Dana Spiotta's “Innocents and Others” for NPR.

Robert Hoover reviews Douglas Brinkley's “Rightful Heritage.”

For Jadaliyya’s audio journal Status Hour, Julie Hakim Azzam interviews Leila Abdelrazaq about her graphic novel “Baddawi.”

Marian Ryan reviews “Knockout” by John Jodzio.

Ron Slate reviews “The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens” by Paul Mariani.

Rachel Mack reviews “The Benedictines” by Rachel May.

Former NBCC board member Mark Athitakis reviews “Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings,” by Stephen O'Connor.

“Trouble and Surrender in Flynn, Jackson, and Marvin,” an essay from Lisa Spaar.